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Strengthening Data Literacy across the Curriculum (SDLC)

The Strengthening Data Literacy across the Curriculum (SDLC) project is a research study that is funded by the National Science Foundation to develop an evidence-based approach toward promoting statistical thinking and interest in quantitative data analysis among high school students, particularly underrepresented minorities. Led by a collaboration of researchers and developers at Education Development Center (EDC), statistics educators at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), and technology developers at The Concord Consortium, the project will create and study a set of curriculum modules targeted to high school students who are not taking advanced-placement (AP) mathematics or statistics classes. Envisioned as extended sets of applied data investigations, the modules will engage students in explorations of authentic public policy questions relating to social and economic outcomes of different groups in U.S. society using large-scale social science data sets. To conduct these explorations, students will use the Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP), a powerful open-source platform of data analysis tools that has been developed by The Concord Consortium. Integrating CODAP tools, SDLC curriculum modules will help learners explore data visually and will provide students with experiences in multivariable analysis—an important domain that is underemphasized in current high school mathematics and statistics curricula. Students will explore questions such as: What have been the average wages of high school graduates versus college graduates over the past 50 years? How have wage disparities between high school and college graduates varied for men and women, and for different racial and ethnic groups?